


Every New Beginning

by thelilacfield



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 18:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1992447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even beginnings have to end, and the darkness seems like it might never end. But, even from an ending, from desolation, beauty can bloom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every New Beginning

**[drafling](http://drafling.tumblr.com/) prompted:**  Ooh, maybe another undead-rave party? :D I would love to read that. | **title from _closing time_  by semisonic. full lyric:  _every new beginning comes from some other beginning's_ _end_**

* * *

The room feels blank, white, like the clouds. Wisps of reality, floating around the edges, and nothing so simple as clouds. Not the creation of water or snow or hail, the release and the purpose. Only the creation of grief exists here, the bubbling force of anger and sadness that threatens to crack the veins of the walls and burst through.

"Last time we spoke, you said that you wanted to visit the bungalow," Shirley says, and it finally brings Kieren back from staring at the walls, wondering where the heart of the building is, whether it can break like a human's, crack and splinter and leave behind nothing but dust. "Did you ever do that?" He nods, clamping his lips tight together in a hard line, and she says, "Tell me about that."

"Simon came to my family's door the morning after the funeral," he says, smoothing his palms along his thighs, letting his fingernails run along the subtle black-on-black stripes on the material. He's still wearing the colour of mourning, even all these days later, because the wound still hasn't healed. Perhaps it never will. "He was crying, I remember hearing it when my dad opened the door. It was horrible to hear. He said he couldn't stay in the bungalow, because everything was filled with memories. And I didn't understand until I went there, and as soon as I stepped through the door I couldn't breathe. It was like she was still there, everything smelt like her, her clothes still in the drawers, those flowers she liked to wear on top of her bedside table, her cover-up mousse and her extra contacts stuffed into a drawer. I mean, I believed for a second that she wasn't dead, that she'd come sweeping out of the door and laugh at me for smelling her things."

He takes the small scarf out of his pocket, unfolds it in his lap, and wraps the sheer black material around his fingers, staring down at the vivid pattern. Butterflies, each beating their wings in flight, reaching for the sky in a way Amy will never be able to. "Zoe came around today," he says. "She dropped a ticket at my feet and looked at me like I was scum and left. It entitles me and a plus one to another party at the barn, like we had the night Henry disappeared. But I don't know if I can. It feels so soon."

"What would Amy say to you if she was sitting next to you?" Shirley asks, her face round and open and friendly. "You knew her so well, Kieren, I'm sure you know what she'd tell you. Would she want you to put your whole life on hold to mourn?"

"She'd tell me I was being an idiot for wanting to hole up in my room and try to block it all out," Kieren says, and he can't help the way his lips twitch up into a smile. He's not supposed to smile, not yet, he can't feel such joy when his best friend is in the ground and can't come back. "She'd laugh and call me dumb-dumb. And she'd probably hit me with something for trying to push the man who loves me away because she once believed he was hers and I snatched him away. And, without her, that guilt is  _horrible_."

"Simon loves you?" Shirley asks, a slight note of shock in her voice, and Kieren nods. "How do you know that? Last time you told me you were looking to put a label on your relationship, any progress there?"

"He hasn't really said it yet," Kieren says, fidgeting in his chair. "But you don't jump in front of a bullet for someone you just feel physically towards. And it always feels like he loves me. But I know I'm shutting him out, the way I shut everyone out before I died, and I feel awful but I can't stop it. And he tries to push harder, because he thinks that I'm having doubts about us, but I'm not. I love him."

"Why?" That one word is so simple, and Shirley is looking at him with such genuine wondering, that Kieren has to retreat for a moment, into his own mind. Why? One word that has the potential to tear everything down, or make it blaze brighter than ever before.

"Why does anyone love anyone?" he finally says, and he can see the stern,  _Don't answer a question with a question_  look in Shirley's eyes. "After Freddie went rabid, after I walked away thinking that I could do that, and I didn't feel safe in my own skin, I went to the bungalow. And I didn't go for Amy, I went for him. It was like I was on autopilot, like someone else was controlling me. I had a traumatic experience, and my first instinct was to go to him. That must mean something." He looks down at his hands, fingers twisting anxiously together in his lap. "Simon is just so loving, and he cut so many ties for me, and I just don't understand why anyone would want me so badly that they would do that. I didn't know love could be that strong."

"Gosh, honey, you must have had a terrible relationship in the past to feel like that about yourself," Shirley says, and Kieren is moments away from letting his past spill out, making ripples in the community, but he clamps it down fiercely and just nods. "Kieren, I promise, you are a good person and you are so worthy of that kind of love. If I were you, I would go to this party tonight, with Simon. Use it as a chance to reconnect with him, and tell him everything you've told me. He needs to know how you feel, I'm sure he's just as lost in the aftermath of what happened as you are. Everyone handles loss differently. His show of love and affection could be him expressing a fear that he might lose you too."

Smiling at her and shaking her hand, Kieren inhales sharply in shock when she stands and pulls him into a warm hug. "Come back and see me soon, and tell me about him," she says. "It's beautiful when you talk about him, your eyes just get this light about them and you start to smile faintly. That's what love is, sweetie."

He leaves the house tugging his coat around him, watching the wind whip violently along the street, snatching at the flowers struggling out of the hard winter frost, beauty blooming from desolation. Looking at the white petals, pulled back and forth by the wind, he finds his mind drifting to Simon. Maybe they can be like the snowdrops, flowering out of the destruction into something extraordinarily beautiful.

Night cloaks the town, the sky peppered with stars, and Simon is waiting in the kitchen, hidden behind the baggy jumper, arms wrapped around his torso like he's holding himself together. Wrapping his hand around Simon's, squeezing his fingers together reassuringly, Kieren calls out, "We're leaving. Don't wait up!"

"They're not going to want me there," Simon says as they walk down the street together, holding hands like a couple would. "You're just tempting them to retaliate. We need to keep our heads down, Kieren, after what happened."

"Zoe dropped the invitation at my feet this morning, and if she didn't want us there when she knows I would bring you as a plus one, she wouldn't have left it for me," Kieren rationalises, and pulls Simon closer, letting his hand wrap around him and squeeze him closer. "It's okay, it's just a party. There'll be so many people there, no one will even notice us."

Music is already pounding out from the building, and Brian is leaning casually against the wall by the doorway, looking at the path leading to the door. "Glad you made it!" he says enthusiastically at their approach, and if that doesn't confirm that he's already partaken in some sheep brains then nothing will. "Go right in, Zoe's off her head and won't notice if I don't check all the invitations first."

Lights are bright and whirling, and the heaving mass of bodies simply blends into one. Someone is singing along to the song playing, something with a heavy bass and a fast beat and a male singer, and there are plates of sheep brains being passed around, evident in the loose smiles on everyone's faces and the way they're all pressed together, uncaring for feelings in the face of the sudden rivalry within the undead.

"I'm not touching it," Simon says, his mouth pressed against's Kieren's ear in the din and the crush. "I want to be on guard in case someone tries to hurt either one of us. It would be so easy for someone to slip through in a busy place like this."

"You worry too much," Kieren whispers to him, and it feels so intimate, just the two of them sealed off from the party, close together in a dark and shadowed corner that might start rumours about groping and enthusiastic kissing. "Just try to enjoy yourself, please. If you want to go home, we can."

He circulates, weaving through the crowd to find people he knows. He finds Freddie, finally back from Norfolk, and they yell at each other over the music, trying to catch up on each other's lives. Kieren doesn't tell him that Haley and Amir got engaged in a highly public affair, and he's sure that Freddie doesn't tell him everything either. On a night like this, no one wants to feel anything but joy and adrenaline.

"Your boyfriend's just standing around looking sad," one girl says to him, shouting into his ear. "Go get him, tiger, he's bringing the rest of us down with that look. Come dance with the rest of us."

It's his turn to push, his turn to press the button, his turn to fight for them. He needs to show Simon that he isn't having doubts, and so he's driven to cross the room and offer a hand to him. "Come and dance with me," he says, so quietly and hopefully, and Simon steps closer to him, putting both hands on his waist and letting them sway gently from side to side, barely dancing. "I talked about you when I went to see Shirley today."

"All good things, I hope," Simon says, and it's an attempt at a joke that makes Kieren smile and breath out something resembling a laugh. "What did she ask you about me? I thought these sessions were for grief counselling."

"There's a lot I have to get out, and I can say all of it to her without worrying that she'll judge me," Kieren explains, and there's a wounded look in Simon's eyes. "I would talk to you, but so much is so complicated and about  _us_ , and I need to figure out my own mind and my own feelings before we address any of it."

"And?" Simon's face is hard and set, and a worried frown creases his forehead, and his eyes are full of doubt and fear and anxiety and desperation. "How do you feel? You've been so closed off since Amy died, and I worry that you find me cloying. I just...I've never felt this way about someone before."

"I love you, Simon," Kieren says, all in a rush, and his chest heaves when it's over, relief coursing through him and a weight lifting from his shoulders. "I love you, and after what happened with Rick I didn't think I could ever find someone who made me feel like this. But I've been hurt, and despite everything you've done for me I still don't know how you could love me too."

Simon tilts their forehead together, and takes Kieren's hands gently in his. "I had no idea you and Amy were so similar," he says softly. "I love you so much, Kieren, and I've tried so hard to show you that, because I've been too afraid to say it, in case I was hurt." He kisses Kieren then, a brief and passionate surprise, and says, "You are so worthy of love, Kieren. You're beautiful, inside and out."

They kiss again, in the swathe of the shadows, with their fingers intertwined, and Kieren smiles against the lips of the man who he loves and who, impossibly, loves him in return. He always thought of leaving the hospital as a new beginning, of Amy who made that new beginning brighter, but everything has an ending, even a beginning.

But love is here, love has snatched him up when he least expected it, and with the closing of one door comes the opening of a window, a breath of fresh air in kisses and morning when he wakes with someone next to him and eyes that sell devotion. Simon is another chapter in his second life, and, in that moment, he is so grateful that he was part of the Rising, if only because now he has the chance to know a love like this.


End file.
